Depardieu joins long list of French tax exiles
影星德巴狄厄加入法國避稅者行列

French film star Gerard Depardieu, wearing a local costume, shows his new Russian passport in the town of Saransk in the Mordoviya Republic, southeast of Moscow, Russia on Jan. 6.一身傳統服飾裝扮的法國影星傑哈‧德巴狄厄，一月六日在俄羅斯莫斯科東南部莫多維亞的薩蘭斯克，亮出他的護照。

Photo: Reuters照片：路透

A tax exile row between millionaire movie star Gerard Depardieu and the Socialist government of President Francois Hollande hides a much older problem with French taxes.

To be sure, Hollande’s headline-grabbing 75 percent income tax band may well be prompting well-off French to consider lives as exiles in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland or Britain.

But in moving to Belgium, Depardieu, like thousands before him, was only rebelling against far more entrenched French tax rules built up over decades by governments of all political stripes and which the exiles argue punish talent and effort.

For some champions of business, entertainment and finance, the fact that they can pay much less in neighboring countries has won the day over national solidarity.

Yet while the wealth tax was introduced by Hollande’s Socialist mentor Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s, it really began to bite when conservative former prime minister Alain Juppe removed upper limits on total wealth tax bills in 1997.